Bats and Homeowner’s Insurance

Greetings Arthropodians! I hope this pandemic hasn’t been too hard on you and your loved ones.

Some of you may remember me has a co-host of this podcast. Bryan and I did over one hundred episodes together before I decided to spend more of my off-time with family. Sometimes I miss doing the show, but Scott has brought a new flavor to the podcast that I really enjoy. I’m sure y’all feel the same way.

Keep doing your thing, gentlemen!

I wanted to drop by today to share a bit of information that I recently learned about bats and homeowner’s insurance.

For years, I just assumed that bat removal and clean up was not covered by insurance. I’ve asked many insurance adjusters about it and got the same answer – NO.

Pull a policy and look at the “Exclusion” section. What you’ll see is a listing (usually #6 or #7) of animal damage NOT covered by insurance. The animals usually listed include: birds, rodents, insects and vermin.

That’s the key.

Bats are none of those things.

SOME policies list bats, but MOST policies only list the aforementioned.

What does this mean?

In many cases, your customer will not have to spend more than their deductible to have costly clean-up services like guano removal and attic restoration performed. In addition, with the right approach, bat bug removal can be covered as well. After all, bat bugs would not be present if there were no bats, correct?

Unfortunately, most policies won’t cover bat-proofing, but that’s just the way the ball bounces. I highly recommend you do NOT take a creative approach on the bat-proofing piece; there is this thing called fraud.

If you’d like more detail on the difference between bats, rodents and vermin, you can visit the post on my new blog KnowBats.com.

I hope that bit of info helps some of you as much as it has me!